Roosevelt, Theodore, twenty-sixth President

Autograph draft of a speech on the Panama Canal, 9 pages (7 3/8 x 5 1/2 in.; 186 x 140 mm) on stationery of the "Hamburg-Amerika Linie," [Oyster Bay, New York, 2 July 1914]; lightly soiled.  Russet half-morocco clamshell box.

Christie's New York, 28 November 1983, lot 327 (unnamed consignor)

lightly soiled
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"It is hypocrisy to claim credit for the Canal and at the same time to attempt to discredit the course which alone rendered the Canal possible."

The construction of the Panama Canal between 1907 and 1914 was a complex feat of engineering rivaled only by the complexity of the legal arrangements detailing the ownership of the land and the control of the Canal. When the 1903 Hay-Herran Treaty was not ratified by the Colombian Senate, the United States intervened with naval forces to encourage the movement to separate Panama from Colombia. With the completed Canal set to open 15 August 1914, the Wilson administration secured a treaty with Colombia expressing "sincere regret" for U.S. actions that helped to pry Panama loose from Colombia during the canal adventure. As a manifestation of that regret, the United States agreed to pay $25 million.

Former President Roosevelt, in whose administration the Canal was built, was again becoming a force in the Republican Party. He expressed his unmistakable outrage at Wilson's action and won support of his friends in the U.S. Senate, where Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts managed to prevent consideration of the treaty. The present speech, apparently given at a press conference at his home in Oyster Bay, expresses that outrage in no uncertain terms: "The payment of 25 millions to Colombia, together with what is in effect an apology for our having built the Panama Canal, is merely the belated payment of blackmail with an apology to the blackmailers. If this proposed treaty submitted by President Wilson thru Secretary Bryan is right, then our presence on the Isthmus is wrong, Panama should at once be restored to Colombia, and we should stop work on the Canal and abandon the place bag and baggage. There should be no halfway measures. If we as a nation have been guilty of theft we should restore the stolen goods. If we have not been guilty of theft we should not pay blackmail. The handling of our foreign affairs by Messrs Wilson and Bryan has been such as to make the United States a figure of fun in the international world."

He goes on to outline the history of the original treaty and the widely accepted need for the canal, defending his own administration and its decisions regarding the project. A stirring, vehement, and lengthy statement, the kind for which Teddy Roosevelt is renowned.